Where Garment Alteration & Self-harm Meet

We now turn to consider that salt-encrusted voyager on the high seas, NUS strike veteran & RSU Health & Safety Rep Bob “Put it in Writing” Flux.

Politicised, in his own special way, by the famous P & O dispute, he combined the Red Flag with the Union Jack to arrive at what I could best describe as a Strasserite take on politics.

Bob was the second person I met when I arrived at Ruskin for the first time (Colombus was the first). As I stood in the hallway of The Rookery, trying to get my bearings, Bob greeted me. Pointing to a poster entitled something like “Oxford Lesbian Association” he declaimed in his booming southern English tones, “Heh heh! I’ve got all their films”. I think Bob’s lines were scripted by The Sun. It certainly provided the posters for his room, including such classics as “Ten Countries We’ve Stuffed at War”. I imagine that he’s probably gone on to a career in conflict resolution with the United Nations or the Diplomatic Corps. Either that or he’s Equalities Officer at the EHRC.

He had a scar on his nose as a result of a fight on board some merchant vessel or other (and no, it wasn’t the work of Bilbo). As he related the tale, he’d nearly had his conk bitten off in the scuffle. In his own words; “we didn’t have a medic on board, only a first aider, and we weren’t due in port for weeks. He stuck a couple of stitches in to hold my nose on. I walked around for the rest of the voyage with my finger on my nose, shit-scared of sneezing in case it flew off”.

One of my abiding memories of Bob centres around a blazing hot day during our period at Walton Street. It was the sort of day which would have made even a Cuban seek shade. Bob decided to make himself a pair of shorts. He appeared on the terrace wearing a pair of tight jeans which, he told the assembled comrades, he was going to make into a pair of “cut-offs”. As it turned out, in Bob’s context, this term referred as much to cutting off your own legs as it did to altering a pair of trousers. He retreated to his room, sat on the bed, took a sharp hunting knife (one of the many survivalist implements & close combat weapons which he kept lying around – as you do) & started to saw away at the upper thighs of the jeans. Whilst wearing the jeans. Having removed one trouser leg, wincing, and with blood streaming down his legs (and this is the really incredible bit) he then proceeded, having learnt nothing from his pain, to commence work on the next leg.

I am glad that I didn’t live in the next room to him; the screams must have been deafening whenever he decided to iron his shirt.

Ian has tracked him down (sort of): see the link at the right of this page. Will he be joining us, I wonder?

Venceramos!